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A review by liralen
Fierce: How Competing for Myself Changed Everything by Aly Raisman
3.0
Three and a half stars. Fierce is definitely one of the better gymnastics memoirs I've read of late—certainly the best of Raisman's cohort. Whether that's because she did her writing at a slightly older age (you laugh, but there's a big difference between being 17 and being 23 when it comes to maturity of writing!) or because she had a better ghostwriter, I can't say, but she manages to keep the timeline moving while slowing down enough to talk about individual competitions (not just how she did but how it felt to prepare and compete). There are also some pretty entertaining anecdotes:
Inside the Olympic Village, fruit and drink stands dotted the walkways, and every athlete was given a special keycard to swipe in vending machines for as many free bottles of sports drinks as we wanted. Whenever we had a team meeting with Martha [Károlyi], we would sit meekly and not at whatever she said. If we talked, she might see that our tongues had turned bright blue from the forbidden sugary drinks we'd been sneaking. Each time Martha left, we would cover our mouths to stifle the nervous laughter. (160)
It's actually kind of striking to see Raisman talk about how little nutritional guidance she got until she went looking for it on her own. Certainly the stereotype for gymnasts is that there's heavy pressure to remain thin (although there's been a shift in recent years towards more overtly muscular gymnasts) and eat, like, nothing but salad and the occasional grilled meat, and indeed Raisman mentions times of being shamed for eating in a way that somebody didn't think was how a gymnast 'should' eat...but you'd also think that by now there would be dietitians and so on on hand to help the national team (and other elite gymnasts) figure out how best to fuel their bodies for the crazy amounts of exercise they do and the skills they have to achieve. (It's stupid how often eating as little as possible is still seen as the ideal. Also, who gives a flying f*ck what somebody weighs—or eats, or looks like—when they can do the things elite gymnasts can?)
Raisman talks a little about the allegations against Nasser. She's as clear as it's possible to get that details are off the table, which of course is fine—her story, her choice! But I'm passively curious about the decision to include Nasser in the book. He's mentioned a couple of times in passing, and then there's a chapter devoted to Raisman dealing with the aftermath, and it reads to me as...not an afterthought, but something that was added after the fact when somebody (hopefully Raisman herself, obviously) decided that it had to be addressed. Not a criticism; I imagine it was a complicated decision to make and a hard chapter to write.
The best gymnastics books (or books about athletics more generally...or, hell, 'experience' memoirs more generally) that I've read have brought to the table not just the athletics but some other story, or stories, under the surface. Raisman doesn't quite get there: hers is a really solid gymnastics memoir, obviously something she put a lot of work into, but its core and the vast majority of...I'm about to kill this metaphor...its flesh is gymasticsgymnasticsgymnastics. If you want a really complex, beautifully written memoir not on any particular subject, probably look somewhere else, but for gymnastics, this is not a bad way to go.
Inside the Olympic Village, fruit and drink stands dotted the walkways, and every athlete was given a special keycard to swipe in vending machines for as many free bottles of sports drinks as we wanted. Whenever we had a team meeting with Martha [Károlyi], we would sit meekly and not at whatever she said. If we talked, she might see that our tongues had turned bright blue from the forbidden sugary drinks we'd been sneaking. Each time Martha left, we would cover our mouths to stifle the nervous laughter. (160)
It's actually kind of striking to see Raisman talk about how little nutritional guidance she got until she went looking for it on her own. Certainly the stereotype for gymnasts is that there's heavy pressure to remain thin (although there's been a shift in recent years towards more overtly muscular gymnasts) and eat, like, nothing but salad and the occasional grilled meat, and indeed Raisman mentions times of being shamed for eating in a way that somebody didn't think was how a gymnast 'should' eat...but you'd also think that by now there would be dietitians and so on on hand to help the national team (and other elite gymnasts) figure out how best to fuel their bodies for the crazy amounts of exercise they do and the skills they have to achieve. (It's stupid how often eating as little as possible is still seen as the ideal. Also, who gives a flying f*ck what somebody weighs—or eats, or looks like—when they can do the things elite gymnasts can?)
Raisman talks a little about the allegations against Nasser. She's as clear as it's possible to get that details are off the table, which of course is fine—her story, her choice! But I'm passively curious about the decision to include Nasser in the book. He's mentioned a couple of times in passing, and then there's a chapter devoted to Raisman dealing with the aftermath, and it reads to me as...not an afterthought, but something that was added after the fact when somebody (hopefully Raisman herself, obviously) decided that it had to be addressed. Not a criticism; I imagine it was a complicated decision to make and a hard chapter to write.
The best gymnastics books (or books about athletics more generally...or, hell, 'experience' memoirs more generally) that I've read have brought to the table not just the athletics but some other story, or stories, under the surface. Raisman doesn't quite get there: hers is a really solid gymnastics memoir, obviously something she put a lot of work into, but its core and the vast majority of...I'm about to kill this metaphor...its flesh is gymasticsgymnasticsgymnastics. If you want a really complex, beautifully written memoir not on any particular subject, probably look somewhere else, but for gymnastics, this is not a bad way to go.